


My Hands to Learn

by faege



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 06:55:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faege/pseuds/faege
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean hunt the Abominable Snowman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Hands to Learn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mamapranayama](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=mamapranayama).



The thing is, Steven wasn’t even supposed to be camping. He was supposed to be working on an essay, he has two days before the semester ends and he’ll fail if he doesn’t turn it in, but Jordan had said it would be just for one night and he’d promised to bring a six-pack. As cliché as it sounds, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

The drive up to the mountains hadn’t been long but it was dark before they’d set up their tent and gotten a fire going. He remembered laughing at something Jordan had said and stumbling into the trees to piss in the freezing night air. It had started snowing, thick flakes that had seemed too incredible to be real. He’d been more than half drunk at the time, a pleasant buzz running up his spine, but the blood and the cold had sobered him since then.

Jordan was in pieces by the time Steven came back. He hadn’t gone far, he knows that, but he hadn’t heard anything. No cries, no screams. Nothing more than a low whistle, which he took for the wind. Nothing to tell him that anything was wrong but for the carnage he found when he got back. He looked, he knows he did, but he can’t remember anything aside from the red blur of Jordan’s chest, the crunch of a beer can under his Converse, and the white fragility of Jordan’s hand where it lay next to the tent, fingers brushing the flap like it was trying to climb inside.

Hours later and that image still plays in the back of Steven’s head, like those boy-band songs that Bethany loves. The snow falls around him thickly, reminding him simultaneously of Christmas and of all those horror movies which start out with a couple making out in the woods and ends with them getting picked off by a monster they can’t see. He doesn’t know what killed Jordan. He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know how to get back, or how to survive, or what shoves him over until he’s facedown in the snow, the cold of it shocking him back to reality.

He rolls over, heart in his throat, expecting to see whatever it was that left Jordan in pieces. Instead, he sees a guy in a blue parka getting to his feet and picking up the duffel that fell off his shoulder.

“Found the straggler,” he says, looking down at Steven like he’s a three-year-old lost in the mall.

“He okay?” another guys asks, coming up behind the first. _Tall_ is all Steven can think and then he blacks out.

\--

He wakes up in a shallow cave, a small fire crackling a few feet away and the two guys from before crouching next to it.

“What do you think? It took off north after taking out that first guy?” the parka guy is saying and the tall one nods.

“Feels that way. If we don’t get it soon we’re going to miss our chance. It left the kid alive; it’s done feeding, it’s going to want to hibernate.”

“’Kay, easy, you stay with the kid, I’ll track it down and kill it.”

“Very funny, Dean,” the tall guy says and Steven doesn’t have to open his eyes to know that he’s shooting the guy in the blue parka a venomous glare.

“You think you’re the only gifted one around here? I can track.”

“In the middle of nowhere after a snowstorm? Yeah, I’d say I’m pretty much the best chance we have.”

The fire crackles and Steven hears the sounds of boots scraping the stone floor, and then a shadow falls over him.

“Y’know, it’s rude to eavesdrop without introducing yourself first,” a voice says and Steven opens his eyes, squinting in the dim. Blue Parka Guy is standing over him, boots a little too close to Steven’s face to be comfortable.

He sits up, still a little shaky. “I’m Steven,” he says. The word comes out strangled and small like he’s fifteen and wrestling with puberty. “Miller.”

“I’m Dean,” the guy says, then jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “The guy wearing the dorky beanie is Sam.” Sam nods at him from over the fire and Steven hadn’t noticed before but he is wearing a beanie, green, his hair long enough to curl out of the bottom.

“I’m Steven,” he says again and Dean rolls his eyes.

“I thought you said he didn’t have a concussion.”

“Shut up, Dean,” Sam says mildly. “You got family, Steven?”

“Yeah.”

“That other guy with you. Was he your brother?”

Steven shakes his head. “A friend. It’s just me and my sister at home.”

“Older or younger?” Dean asks.

“Younger. Bethany.”

Dean snorts. “Yeah, I know what that’s like,” he says, and for some reason Sam makes another face. Dean pulls a flask out of his parka and hands it to Steven. “Here. Take a drink.” Steven obediently takes a swig, not sure what he was expecting, but the water feels good on his throat and he drinks half of it before handing it back and wiping his mouth.

“Thanks.”

“Now this.”

Dean hands him another flask and this one holds whiskey, blazing a sharp line of fire down his throat. He coughs and hands it back.

“You guys camping too?” he asks.

“Sort of,” Sam says. He’s not standing but his size is written in the width of his hands, the stretch of the parka over his shoulders. He’s making less movement than Dean, too, talking quieter, and it seems weird until Steven realizes that he’s doing Steven a favor, subconsciously telling Steven to trust him by doing what he can to appear unthreatening.

It works for Sam, but Dean is threatening enough for the both of them. He smiles and cracks jokes and takes a pull from the whiskey flask like he graduated with a degree in fraternities but he’s also watching Steven like a hawk.

“We’re hunting, actually,” Dean says. He sits cross-legged across the fire from Sam and Steven sees a glint of metal near Dean’s ankle. It rushes over him like ice down his spine: this guy has a knife in his boot. The hell does this guy have a knife in his boot?

“What are you hunting?” The question comes out shakier than he’d like.

“We were hoping you’d tell us,” Dean says. He adjusts the knife and smiles when he catches Steven watching him. “Sam over there thinks it might be a yeti. We’re going off spine-tingles and footprints, though, so if you have any ideas, feel free to share with the class.”

“A yeti?” Steven feels like his mind is filled with cotton that bounces around everything he’s told and only spews out questions. “Like Bigfoot?”

“More like his silver-backed cousin. You’ve heard of the Abominable Snowman.”

Steven casts a look at Sam to gauge whether Dean is joking. Sam is looking out at the landscape beyond the narrow mouth of the cave. The snow isn’t falling as hard.

“We should head out soon,” Sam says and for some reason Dean might look at Steven like he’s not even sure he’s a regular person inside that skin, but he takes Sam’s word as law.

“Get yourself together, Stevie. We’re hunting.”

\--

For his fifteenth birthday, Steven’s dad took him out to the shooting range. His shoulder had been black and blue the next morning and he’d missed baseball practice, but he’d decided that the adrenaline rush was more than worth it. He’d gotten a similar feeling when he went rock-climbing for the first time, and after finally kissing Hailey Winston at prom last year—butterflies.

Adrenaline, he finds out as Sam throws out an empty palm and the hulking _thing_ with bloodstained claws falls back, is not a ball of nerves in your stomach or a breathless rush of fear followed by giddiness. It’s sour, every muscle locked, stomach cramping to bring up bile that can’t push through the tightness of your throat. It doesn’t make you brave—it just makes your legs tremble as you huddle in the snow and pray.

He doesn’t even know it’s over until Dean rolls him over, hands tight on his shoulders as he pats him down and says, “He’s fine.”

Sam’s on his knees in the snow, hunched over like something kicked him in the stomach, and he’s holding his right wrist to his chest, but he offers Steven a smile like it’s going to make everything all better.

It shouldn’t make sense that it does.

Then Dean is pulling Sam to his feet, quick, efficient, like he’s done this a million times in a million different ways. Sam lets him sketch careful fingers over the wrist and Dean grunts, some of the tension leaving his shoulders.

“Stevie.” It’s said like an order, like a whip-crack, and it gets Steven moving like it was meant to, rousing him from whatever state of shock he was in and gets him functioning again. He picks up their duffel from the ground without being asked and shoulders it much like Dean shoulders Sam.

He catches Dean looking at him and smiling, Sam looking at him with a frown. He doesn’t know why, but the worn strap feels solid against his shoulder, the bump of the bag comforting against his ribs. It helps steady him, drains the sick feeling of the adrenaline until his fingers are only shaking a little.

He follows Dean and Sam out of the snow.

\--

There’s an ambulance waiting for them when they reach the pavement. Police cars with flashing lights shining blue and red against the snow, paramedics with foil blankets and hot thermoses, and a big black car parked next to his own Jeep, both covered with a light dusting of white. Steven will bet anything there’s yellow tape around the slashed remains of Jordan’s tent.

It hits him like a punch that Jordan won’t use that tent again and then he sees his mom and dad and he’s crying, big wet tears that feel like they’re burning his chapped cheeks. His mom shushes him, somehow fitting him under her chin like when he was a kid, and his dad rubs his back.

“Where’s Bethany?” he chokes out and his mom says, “She’s at home with Grandma. We called and told her you were okay. We were all so worried.”

“They helped me.” It somehow seems vital that they know this, that he introduce his family to Sam and Dean, to show them his way of escape. “They killed the…the…”

A policeman is standing a respectful distance away but he comes forward with questions when Steven lifts his head: What happened? Can you identify the person who was with you? Did you see what did it? Who else was involved? He gives vague answers, too shell-shocked by the press of people to do much else, but it was what he’d been told to do. The victim card, Dean had called it, but he hadn’t said it the way Steven normally heard it, when the person in question was weak or unbalanced. He’d said it like Jordan was a civilian casualty and Steven was an innocent bystander in a war.

The black car is gone when Steven finally gets through the questions, foil blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and so are Dean and Sam. There’s a piece of paper with a phone number in his pocket, though, and it stays in his mind long after he goes home.

In the spring, he signs up for lessons at the shooting range and gets himself a duffel bag.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://spn-j2-xmas.livejournal.com/profile)[**spn_j2_xmas**](http://spn-j2-xmas.livejournal.com/) exchange for [](http://mamapranayama.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://mamapranayama.livejournal.com/)**mamapranayama**. I took liberties with the prompt 'Sam and Dean run into trouble and an old-fashioned monster of the week hunt' and tried to throw in hints of hurt!Sam and powers!Sam for you. Hope you like!


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